Other than importing data, why do you need a GUI tool at all? I've used PostgreSQL for fifteen years and managed everything I needed to do by entering SQL commands with the psql client. It forced me to learn about the intricacies of SQL syntax and become a more competent database administrator as a result.

When I started using PostgreSQL, MySQL was not available under a license that permitted free redistribution. As somone who was building servers for clients, that was a major obstacle. I started using PostgreSQL and never looked back. While MySQL was shuffled around among a variety of corporate owners, I just continued to use the one database I knew would always be well-supported and unencumbered, PostgreSQL. I've never regretted this decision.

Every time I have to deal with MySQL, I wonder why it is so popular. Even the simple task of creating and managing users is much more difficult with MySQL.

If you really must use a GUI tool, I prefer Microsoft Access with the PostgreSQL ODBC connector. I've tried OO Base a couple of times, but it still seems rather clunky.

MS has not been able to beat linux in the server room. There's a lot of big bucks in corporate software.

You mean that server room running Linux Active Directory and Linux Exchange? There is a lot of big bucks in corporate software, and most of it still goes to Microsoft and its third-party developers. Companies might have their websites on Linux servers, but the desktop ecosystem at most organizations is still pretty much an MS preserve.

Do your parents use Photoshop? Their friends and relatives? When was the last time they bought a PC game for themselves at GameStop?

I see reasoning by anecdote way too often on this site. What percentage of people with home computers own a (legal or illegal) copy of Photoshop? I don't know the answer to that question, do you? A search of Google sure doesn't provide any insights.

Mozilla is an obvious anti-MS, Firefox was started in part to restore open standards on the web, IOW, to loosen IE's iron grip on the web.

Firefox is the direct descendant of Netscape which itself was built on the original NCSA Mosaic browser. Both Mosaic and Netscape pre-dated Internet Explorer by a year or more. They weren't created to "restore open standards on the web." Rather Internet Explorer was created to undermine open standards on the web and to extend Microsoft's hegemony on the desktop to the Internet. Thank goodness the early versions of IE were so pathetic in comparison to Netscape. Otherwise things might have evolved very differently.

My experience as a FiOS customer that uses both Amazon Instant and Hulu does not fit your description. I've not seen slow performance from either site. I don't find this surprising given that we're generally talking about 480p streams which aren't that bandwidth-intensive to begin with.
 

I'm assuming when you talk about "running a movie from a network drive" you're using SMB filesharing. Try running mplayer from the command prompt with an SMB-shared video, and you'll see the same result.

The solution? Use NFS. Videos shared with NFS to mplayer-based players like SMPlayer just play when opened. If you have to share with both Windows and Linux users, build a Linux file server with support for both NFS and SMB.

I don't think this is a KDE issue at all.

I don't trust executive summaries of polling data; I want to see the entire questionnaire so I can understand the context in which the questions were asked. I'd bet that if people were asked an open-ended question about the "problems facing our country today" cyberterrorism would be lucky to get a 1% response. Here are the top items from the most recent New York Times/CBS poll released yesterday:

Economy and jobs 62%
Federal budget deficit 11
Health care 9
Same-sex marriage 7
Foreign policy 4
Immigration 2
Other/DK 4

I don't see terrorism of any sort on that list.

Even if we accept the findings of the survey, what is most striking in the results is the substantial increase in respondents who say they are "not concerned" about the threats asked about compared to a year ago.

Moreover at least one question has nothing to do with IT, the one about respondents' ability to "meet essential financial obligations." For more relevant questions, solid majorities report being only "somewhat" or "not concerned" about the security of online shopping and banking, computer viruses and spam email, and their own personal security.

The IT media has a habit of touting these self-serving studies by organizations like, in this case, Unisys as somehow providing an "objective" view of public opinion. Puh-leeze.

This thread is a good example of the bubble in which Slashdot readers now seem to reside. Outside of the bubble millions of people use Flash every day to watch videos on thousands of web sites. Inside the bubble we have dozens of postings about how awful Flash is and why you don't use it.

Well, guess what? That's why the fringes of the open-source movement have become progressively less relevant over the years. I've been a Linux user since 1994 and will continue to use it in the future. That said, it's ridiculous to assume that people running Linux won't want to visit sites like Hulu. I turned off Flash, installed flashvideoreplacer, and had no success at sites like Hulu or Crunchyroll. I could get flashvideoreplacer to launch smplayer when I visited YouTube, but it failed miserably with Hulu.

Call me when the entire Internet has converted to HTML5. I'll check back then.

No Hulu, no go.

Who is the "we" here? Developers or end-users? As one of the latter who watches Flash videos on a subscription site (Crunchyroll), what would you suggest I do if they move to Flash 12? Give up my subscription? Use Windows or Google Chrome?

You all may hate Flash, but it remains the most widely-used cross-platform method for distributing video. Someday everything will be using HTML5, but that day isn't happening any time soon. In the meantime, Linux users may or may not be able to watch video on the thousands of web sites that use Flash today. Certainly if I were running a site that uses Flash for videos, I wouldn't be spending money converting to HTML5 just to support a few Linux users.

You've posted this same claim at least half-a-dozen times now. Enough, already.

Given that patents have a seventeen-year term, a patent from 1992 should have expired by now.

Would all these criticisms disappear if the request had come from the Federal Trade Commission? Somehow I suspect that the government-hating contingent on Slashdot would make the same arguments about any requests by a Federal agency.

I don't trust app developers or anyone else whose profits derive from using my personal information. That's why I don't have accounts on Facebook or Twitter.

A friend of mine who is a composer and musician told me he once had someone ask him to autograph a CD full of pirated copies of my friend's works. Now THAT takes chutzpah!

They sit in their 1990s era thinking because despite everything which is changed, and everything which is conspiring against them from the modern age piracy front they are making money.

Not to mention that they have a direct line to the Congress and the Executive Branch.